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Interventionism (economic)

A “mixed economy” is a society in the process of committing suicide.

If a nation cannot survive half-slave, half-free, consider the condition of a
nation in which every social group becomes both the slave and the enslaver of
every other group. Ask yourself how long such a condition can last and what is
its inevitable outcome.

When government controls are introduced into a free economy, they create
economic dislocations, hardships, and problems which, if the controls are not
repealed, necessitate still further controls, which necessitate still further
controls, etc. Thus a chain reaction is set up: the victimized groups seek
redress by imposing controls on the profiteering groups, who retaliate in the
same manner, on an ever widening scale.

Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned
benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others. By what
criterion of justice is a consensus-government to be guided? By the size of the
victim’s gang.

If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not
exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.

Since there is no rational justification for the sacrifice of some men to
others, there is no objective criterion by which such a sacrifice can be guided
in practice. All “public interest” legislation (and any distribution of money
taken by force from some men for the unearned benefit of others) comes down
ultimately to the grant of an undefined, undefinable, non-objective, arbitrary
power to some government officials.

The worst aspect of it is not that such a power can be used dishonestly, but
that it cannot be used honestly.